Looking for ways to save water right where you live? Try growing your own food.

That’s the recommendation of Kelly Harvey, who grows fresh produce on her 6,200-square-foot lot in Oakmore. Three thousand square feet are planted with edibles.

“Locally grown food and water conservation support each other,” Harvey writes on a neighborhood list-serve. “The humus added to the soil holds water, and the more organic matter, or compost, the more water it holds. Our last EBMUD bill showed a total use of two units. That’s 25 gallons per day for two people.”

I talked with her recently about water conservation, agribusiness and the joys of eating organic, fresh produce from your own garden.

“Moving water costs energy and creates pollution,” she said. “Rainwater catchment, an on-site alternative, makes no pollution. And there are no toxins, like fluoride, in rainwater.”

Harvey bought eight, 275-gallon liquid storage containers for $75 each. Together they hold about 2,200 gallons of rainwater, and PVC pipe links them together. She emphasizes local self-sufficiency. As a permaculturist, Harvey is often asked: “Isn’t agribusiness, corporate industrial agriculture, more productive than local, organic farming?”

Not at all, Harvey argues.

“Killing the soil by using petrochemicals is not efficient,” she said. “It’s the height of wasting our natural resources, the primary cause of lost topsoil, of water pollution, loss of amphibians and waste of water.”

According to world-renowned conservationist Vandana Shiva, “Industrial farms use 10 times more water than ecological farms.”

So Harvey is probably right: Growing food at home can save water.

Paul Rockwell, a Montclair resident, is the former children’s librarian with the Albany Library. Rockwell can be reached at gonetubin2@gmail.com.

In addition to evacuating 10 neighboring homes, deputies restricted pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the area while the sheriff's office bomb squad "safely disposed" of the explosives, officials said.